Children's TV agreement on FCC meeting agenda

by Matthew Lasar Sep 21 2006 - 11:00pm Children's TV

The Federal Communications Commission will vote at its next Open Meeting on whether to accept a proposal to set educational content requirements and advertising limits for digital television. The Commission has scheduled the meeting for Tuesday, September 26th.

In early February a consortium of children's advocacy groups and industry representatives informed the FCC that they had reached consensus on a "Joint Proposal" regarding children's TV. The parties include Children Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Parent Teacher Association, Turner Broadcasting, Time Warner, Viacom, NBC, Discovery, CBS, and Disney.

The proposal adapts analog television rules for children's TV to the new digital environment in which signal owners can offer multiple channels. For each new signal, broadcasters will have to add more educational programming. The agreement also sets limits on how much commercial content digital children's programs can include, and how much commercial content Web sites promoted on children's shows can display.

Children's advocates have long awaited this decision. The FCC agreed to the negotiations approach, rather than making a decision through a formal proceeding, because children's advocates and industry representatives took an earlier FCC ruling on children's television to court.

"Court cases can take a very long time. And these rules were just hanging there without being put in place," former FCC commissioner Gloria Tristani told LLFCC in late August.

Current commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate mentioned the negotiations at a Children's Now conference in late July.

At the gathering Tate noted that children under the age of eight often accept advertising as fact. "This cognitive ability combined with the prevalence of unhealthy foods and a more sedentary lifestyle have created a perfect storm that has made childhood obesity a nationwide problem," she said, and added that she hoped the Commission would address the children's TV agreement "very soon."

In early August Tristani, now President of the Benton Foundation, met with Heather Dixon, FCC Chair Kevin Martin's legal advisor, and asked the Commission to accept the proposal at the FCC's next Open Meeting. On September 12 and 13, Susan Mort, counsel to Time Warner, met with representatives of all five FCC Commissioners and urged the same.

In her interview with LLFCC, Tristani said that she was "cautiously optimistic" about passage of the proposal.